Sexuality educator Deborah Roffman was kind enough to share with me specific advice for working with youth in foster care. She noted that professionals who work with this population must meet the five core needs of children and adolescents, and do our best to see that foster parents and birth parents Read more…
The short answer: have your students set their own rules, codify and display them on a piece of poster board, and hold them to those rules. No matter how rude and rowdy they seem, once they get to a certain age, students know how they should be behaving. If you Read more…
I’m still tossing around some ideas on how to conduct a sex, dating, and relationship workshop. I found a “Sexual Pressures” curriculum aimed at middle schoolers that had a nice list of discussion questions to get students thinking deeply about sex and relationships: What is the difference between love and Read more…
In “Blame it on the brain” I touched on how emerging research on the “teen brain” should make us reevaluate how we address the problem of risky behavior among youth. One especially sensitive area is sex ed. My interest, however, lies not in discussing various forms of contraception or the responsibilities of teen parenthood, but in getting young people to think deeply about emotional intimacy and healthy relationships. This aspect of teen sexuality is often overlooked, and this oversight leaves young people without any guidance on how to develop meaningful, intimate bonds even beyond their teens and early twenties. (more…)